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Responsive Feed-in Tariff Adjustment to Dynamic Technology Development

This paper reviews the adjustments of the feed-in tariffs for new solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in Germany. As PV system prices declined rapidly since 2009, the German government implemented automatic mechanisms to adjust the remuneration level for new installations in response to deployment volumes. This paper develops an analytic model to simulate weekly installations of PV systems of up ...

Open Science: One Term, Five Schools of Thought

Open Science is an umbrella term encompassing a multitude of assumptions about the future of knowledge creation and dissemination. Based on a literature review, this chapter aims at structuring the overall discourse by proposing five Open Science schools of thought: The infrastructure school (which is concerned with the technological architecture), the public school (which is concerned with the accessibility ...

Deterrence in Competition Law

Can the Market Stability Reserve Stabilise the EU ETS: Commentators Hedge Their Bets

In response to an imbalance between the demand and supply of permits within the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), the European Commission has proposed the introduction of a Market Stability Reserve (MSR). The MSR represents a quantity based automatic adjustment mechanism, which is designed to tackle the current surplus and introduce a degree of flexibility, allowing the system to respond ...

Structural Vector Autoregressions with Smooth Transition in Variances: The Interaction between U.S. Monetary Policy and the Stock Market

In structural vector autoregressive analysis identifying the shocks of interest via heteroskedasticity has become a standard tool. Unfortunately, the approaches currently used for modelling heteroskedasticity all have drawbacks. For instance, assuming known dates for variance changes is often unrealistic while more exible models based on GARCH or Markov switching residuals are difficult to handle from ...

Impact of Renewable Energy Act Reform on Wind Project Finance

The 2014 reform of the German Renewable Energy Act introduces a mandatory shift from a fixed feed-in tariff to a floating premium system. This is envisaged to create additional incentives for project developers, but also impacts revenues and costs for new investments in wind generation. Thus uncertainties for example about balancing costs and the impact of the location specific generation profile on ...

Entrepreneurs and Their Impact on Jobs and Economic Growth

Entrepreneurs are a rare species. Even in innovation-driven economies, only 1–2% of the work force starts a business in any given year. Yet entrepreneurs, particularly innovative entrepreneurs, are vital to the competitiveness of the economy. The gains of entrepreneurship are only realized, however, if the business environment is receptive to innovation. In addition, policymakers need to prepare for ...

Business Cycles, Unemployment and Entrepreneurial Entry: Evidence from Germany

We investigate whether people are more willing to become self-employed during boom periods or during recessions and to what extent business cycles and unemployment levels influence entries into entrepreneurship. Our analysis for Germany reveals that there is a positive relationship between unemployment rates and start-up activities. Moreover, new business formation is higher during recessions than ...

Marriage- and Family-Related Payments in Retirement: Important for Economic Stability of Families

Family-related breaks in employment often lead to lower statutory pension entitlements, especially for retired mothers. Against this background, the legislation for marriage- and family-related payments has been designed to compensate for such deficits in old-age provision. These payments are directly related to old-age pensions and can be of relevant importance for the economic stability of families ...

The Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Not Just a Matter of Personality

Why do entrepreneurship rates differ so markedly by gender? Using data from a large, representative German household panel, we investigate to what extent personality traits, humancapital, and the employment history influence the start-up decision and can explain the gender gap in entrepreneurship. Applying a decomposition analysis, we observe that thehigherrisk aversion among women explains a large ...